Ewa I’m a member of a Polish FB group that connects women who are programmers or plan to start this job. However, sometimes girls in this group also ask about alternative IT jobs. Then I usually try to spread the news about the possibility of working as a technical writer because only a few people know such a role in IT exists.
At one point, a girl replied to me that she doesn’t want to go into tech writing because it’s the first IT job that’s likely to be replaced with AI in a couple of years. I started to think about it and I also spend a couple of hours discussing this topic with my husband, who is a programmer. Our conclusion was that actually, technical writers are not likely to be fully replaced with AI, and people who think so simply don’t understand this job and the role it plays in IT. I made a note that I should write a blog post about it and explain my point in detail. Unfortunately, I had to stop blogging for some time, because of my husband’s serious illness – so naturally, I had to put off writing this article.
The recent news about ChatGPT made me think about this topic once more. And you know how it works – the more you read about it, the more articles appear in your news feed, so I started to be anxious.
Then I came up with an idea 💡. Why not ask ChatGPT what it thinks about it?
And you know what? I did it. First I asked ChatGPT some general questions about tech writing and then I asked: “Do you think it’s possible to replace tech writers with AI?” Its answer surprised me because it was similar to the conclusion of the discussion with my husband a couple of months ago. It also provided similar arguments that we came up with when trying to justify our opinion.
I know you can also ask ChatGPT about it, but I would like to review it all based on my experience in this job. By the way: having talked to ChatGPT a lot, I concluded that it’s likely to replace bloggers rather than tech writers 🙈.
The importance of soft skills
Many of a technical writer’s daily tasks require communication with developers, testers, managers, designers, etc. To communicate effectively and gather all necessary data, technical writers need soft skills, for example, communication skills and decision-making skills. While AI can generate content based on the data it receives, it’s not able to decide who has the right information and what’s the best way to communicate with these people to gather necessary data.
Understanding the users
Technical writers need a big dose of empathy to understand users. There are different users, different software, different circumstances of using this software – in general, a lot of variables affect the way we should structure and write documentation. Let’s be honest, AI lacks empathy because it’s just a piece of software.
The complexity of the software
Part of technical writers’ job is to get to know the software they document. It can be quite complex and we need to look at it from the human perspective to decide on what possible problems the users may encounter or what information would be most useful to them. While AI may be able to get to know the software, it won’t be able to explain the complexity of it in a simple manner – and that’s very often the most difficult part of writing documentation.
Of course, AI can be a massive help for technical writers. However, remember to be very careful about disclosing sensitive or professional data when you talk to ChatGPT, ask it for reviews, etc.
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